On the other hand, the Ting ware was often marred by certain blemishes which are not always easy to understand. The "awns" (_mang_), for instance, which degraded it at Court in favour of the Ju Chou ware in the early Sung period were probably flaws in the glaze. The "bamboo thread brush marks" mentioned in the _Liu ch´ing jih cha_[196] may perhaps be lines left in the glaze which was applied by means of a bamboo brush. Three other defects which rendered the ware comparatively worthless are named in the _Ko ku yao lun_,[197] viz. _mao_ (thatch), _mieh_ (bamboo splints), and _ku ch´u_ (bare bones). The author fortunately explains that (1) to thatch (_mao_) means to cover over defects, (2) bamboo splints (_mieh_) is used of lines and recalls the brush marks mentioned above, and (3) bare bones (_ku ch´u_) are patches where the glaze is defective and the body shows through. _Ku_, in the sense of "body or biscuit," we are further informed, is a "curio-market expression." Modern collectors will probably not be so fastidious as the Chinese of the fourteenth century, and will welcome a Sung specimen of Ting porcelain, even though it suffer from _mang_ and _ku ch´u_. The _pai ting_ and the _t´u ting_, the fine and coarse white varieties, alone have been identified in Western collections; but there are coloured Ting porcelains which are known to us by literary references. An apocryphal red Ting ware[198] (_hung ting_) is mentioned in two passages of ambiguous meaning which need not necessarily have implied a true red glaze. In any case it finds no place in the older works, such as the _Ko ku yao lun_ and _Ch´ing p´i tsang_, which only speak of purple or brown (_tzŭ_) Ting, and black Ting. "There is purple[199] Ting," says the _Ko ku yao lun_, "the colour of which is purple; there is ink Ting, the colour of which is black, like lacquer. The body in every case is white, and the value of these is higher than that of white Ting." Hsiang, who figured five specimens in his Album, compared them to the colour of ripe grapes and the skin of the aubergine fruit or brinjal, one specimen being _tzŭ ts´ui_ (purple blue); and he further states that out of a hundred and more specimens of Ting ware he had only seen ten of purple and one of black colour.